Computer Systems Posts - Page 11

GTC 2014 - One of the more impressive setups at this year's GPU Technology Conference was from Origin PC, where the custom PC maker had one of its Genesis PCs on display running 4-way GeForce GTX Titan Black GPUs in SLI.

What good are all four of those GPUs if there's not going to be an insane amount of pixels to be pushed, right? Well, are three 4K TVs enough? Yeah - I thought so. The Origin PC Genesis system was pushing out an insane 1.5 billion pixels per second, running Slightly Mad Studios' Project CARS. I didn't get any hands-on time with it unfortunately, but we'll let some of the photos of the setup do some justice.

GTC 2014 - Stumbling across AVADirect at GTC 2014 was a great thing, as the custom PC maker with clients like NASA, BAE Systems, the Department of Homeland Security and much more, it was something we had to do as they had some truly impressive setups on display. One of which, was a super-powerful four-way GPU setup that was running games on a triple 4K setup.

Yes, three 3840x2160 monitors for an insane 11,520x2160... let that sink in for a minute.

Above, a shot of the always smiling Misha Troshin, the CMO and co-owner of AVADirect.

CeBIT 2014 - We have had some hands-on time with MSI's unique Nightblade gaming barebones PC at CeBIT 2014 in Germany. Take a look at our hands-on video below.

Inside of the Nightblade we have a unique OC Genie button, which is capable of overclocking the Nightblade with just a press of a button. Better yet, the overclock is represented by a red light emitting from the Nightblade. Inside of the MSI Nightblade is a case fan that was custom-made for the chassis. The fan speed is dynamically adjusted depending on what you're doing at the time, with the fan capable of driving up to 3600RPM.

As for GPU support, the Nightblade is capable of housing a full-size GPU, with a maximum length of 290mm and 35mm thick. Even something as powerful as AMD's Radeon R9 290X can be installed into the Nightblade. MSI has installed its own MSI GAMING motherboard inside of the Nightblade, as well as a 600W PSU that should be capable of driving any combination of hardware you desire.

There's 7.1-channel HD audio, a Killer NIC E2200 GbE LAN port, up to 16GB of DDR3 RAM is supported, 1 x 3.5-inch HDD or 2 x 2.5-inch HDDs can be installed into the MSI Nightblade to complete your storage setup. Finally, we have a carrying handle, which I think is a genius move by MSI, which allows LAN gamers to buy the perfect LAN PC with the Nightblade.

Zotac is well known for its video cards and its series of Zbox mini PCs for a very long time. The company worked with both AMD and Intel based mini PCs in the past, providing very small systems and barebones for its buyers. The company recently introduced some of its upcoming Zbox mini-PC systems during the CeBIT trade show. The Zotac Zbox 'E' series will be using Haswell and Iris Pro integrated graphics and the smaller Zbox unit AQ02 series will be using AMD Richland APU.

Zotac's senior direct Carsten Berger said that Zbox E series can deliver a good gaming experience and maintain balance between size, performance, heat dissipation and energy consumption. Intel's Haswell architecture and Irs Pro 5200 enabled them to do just that within the Zbox form factor. Zotac is confident that the E-Series can deliver smooth medium quality gaming experience and the perfect option for those LAN party gamers who want a compact PC gaming system.

Before confirming the order, a buyer found out that Dell was charging an amount to install a free and open source web browser 'Firefox'. It was found that the PC builder has an option to install Mozilla Firefox on behalf of the buyer for a new PC if the buyer agrees to pay £16.25. Dell even put this as an option to select in its 'additional software' pre-purchase custom options selection list.

The Mozilla Foundation has started investigating once they've received this report. The company behind Firefox said that they are consulting with legal teams, though the process is in a very early stage.

When I had my old Intel Pentium II system, I was quite content playing the Quake and Unreal titles at the time, but I never once thought of cooking up some fries with my system.

Well, a KitGuru reader did just that with his old Pentium II system, where he cooked french fries in oil using the head generated by his ageing CPU. I don't know how healthy this would be, so we don't recommend doing it at home, but it has to be a first for me - seeing someone put their system into a baking tray and cooking a meal using the heat generated from their computer.

HP's Q1 2013 fiscal reports pointed that its PC business has witnessed a growth after seven quarters.

The PC group business witnessed a growth of 8.5 billion in revenue which reflects 4% in comparison with the previous year. HP's CEO Meg Whitman remains positive that people will be more inclined to shift to a new PC rather than a tablet. She said,"While employees may want a tablet, they also need more traditional compute devices to do their real work."

A researcher was caught using Havard's Odyssey cluster of 14,000 cores that's usually meant for researching new clean energy methods for mining dogecoins.

The assistant dean for Research Computing, James Cuff, sent an email to the rest of the researchers with a message that "Odyssey and Research Computing resources can not be used for any personal or private gain or any non research related activity. Accordingly, any participation in "Klondike" style digital mining operations or contests for profit requiring Harvard owned assets to examine digital currency key strength and length are strictly prohibited for fairly obvious reasons. In fact, any activities using our shared resources for any non scientific purpose that results or does not actually result in personal gain are also clearly and explicitly denied."

Dell joins the Alliance for Wireless Power, short for A4WP, making this as the first biggest PC maker in the world to join an initiative to adopt a wireless charging standard.

Other members of A4WP are Intel, Samsung, LG, SanDisk and other names, but Dell is the first PC maker to join the group. A4WP's primary goal is standardize Rezence, a wireless power transfer method that uses near-field magnetic tech which has the ability to charge multiple device at the same time.

Today, CyberpowerPC announced the launch of a new series of PC gaming systems that are built around NVIDIA's newest GPU's; the GeForce GTX 750, GTX 750 Ti, and the massive new flagship GTX Titan Black. CyberpowerPC says that beginning today, its customers can add these new GPUs to high-performance rigs such as the new Zeus Mini small form factor series, Zeus EVO, and Fang III systems.

"For CYBERPOWERPC customers looking for the perfect balance of performance, sleek design and groundbreaking technologies the GeForce GTX TITAN Black edition is a masterpiece in design and engineering. The new Black edition increases performance by 15 percent while retaining the whisper-quiet acoustics and cool thermals. Any CYBERPOWERRPC system built with this GPU can power your most extreme games, and even 4K and multiple monitors at 25 x 16, with high-speed double precision and 6 GB of frame buffer memory," the company said in a release. CyberpowerPC says that systems featuring the GTX 750, GTX 750 Ti and GTX Titan Black edition start at $649, $699, and $1749 respectively.